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Speech adaptation and situational optimality.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Language serves as a primary means of human adaptation. This paper critically examines attempts to identify certain phonological aspects of language systems as particularly adaptive. These postulate that the CV (consonant plus vowel) syllable is an optimum in speech adaptation to warm climates that encourage "distal communication." These attempts are shown to be over-simplistic, motivated by a model that stresses transmission but disregards speech differentiation. An alternative analysis is proposed that recognizes that speech adaptation must negotiate between transmission and differentiation factors.

"What is decisive, in language, is achieving communication, and this is secured if, at every point in the utterance, the unit chosen is kept distinct from the ones that could have been used, in the very same context, in order to make a different message.--Andre Martinet (1962:8)

Introduction

Language represents a most important contribution to human adaptability, and the capability to use an open and productive communication system provides a significant advantage for humans over all other life forms. This paper will examine whether and how the concept of adaptation is relevant to the structural properties of speech communication. More specifically, is it possible for a particular type of language structure to serve as an optimum in speech adaptation cross-linguistically? A series of papers by Robert Munroe et al. (1996, 1999, 2000) and Melvin and Carol Ember (1999, 2000) have addressed this question by attempting to demonstrate the adaptive value of a consonant-vowel (CV) syllable structure. The latest in this series, by John Fought et al (2004), refines this approach by calculating a mean sonority score (MSS) instead of CV Score (proportion of CV syllables) for an utterance. In fact, this is not much of a change since utterances with a high MSS must also necessarily be utterances with high proportions of CV syllables (Fought et al: 34)[1]. In this paper we will simply refer to these approaches as CV studies and their dependent variable as the CV syllable.

This syllable type is found to carry the maximal sonority and sound contrast at the minimal cost of vocal effort. Based on their findings that it attains greater frequency of use at the expense of other syllable types in warmer climates, the CV syllable structure is assigned the significance of an optimal strategy in speech adaptation to "distal communication." This line of investigation exhibits both promises and problems. On the one hand it may stimulate research on patterns of speech adaptation. On the other hand, however, it employs an overly simplistic interpretation of optimality. We intend to show that assigning adaptive value to CV syllabic structures indiscriminately can be misleading and, contrary to what...

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